“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it…always.”
Mahatma Gandhi
I had not been to my favorite nail salon for almost three months. I had to stop many weeks prior to having a total knee replacement and I was told not to do such things for even more weeks after the surgery. I missed the pampering that I receive when I am there and most of all the sweet manicurist who always makes me feel so special. She and I talk about family and dreams and the kind of things that women understand. So when It was finally okay for me to return I truly looked forward to spending time with a person that I greatly respect and have grown to think of as a friend.
I have to admit that I was somewhat shocked to see that I was the only person present in the usually bustling business. My manicurist, Kim, greeted me with a big smile and began showering me with questions about how my surgery had been and how I was feeling. Once we had caught up on news about our respective family members the topic of the state of the nation quietly came to the forefront of our conversation.
Kim pointed out the obvious lack of customers on a day that might otherwise have been busy. She felt that it was related to the rising costs of groceries and gasoline. After all luxuriating in a salon is something that can rather easily be written out of a budget when finances get stretched. As she mentioned that even people in other countries were feeling the economic pinch of these times I silently counted myself fortunate to be able to be a bit frivolous with the funds that I get from homeschooling and tutoring. I began to wonder how many people were not just struggling but worried about the security of their jobs. I worried about Kim and what would happen to her and her family if the lack of customers caused the salon to close. I viscerally felt the backlash of our shaky economy in a way that had not occurred to me during my cloistered time related to my knee surgery.
I began to occur to me that it was not my imagination that stores seemed to have fewer people inside of late. I wondered if this was also related to fears causing people to cut back on their expenses. With inflation caused by tariffs and higher prices caused by a surprise war with Iran there is an uncertainty hovering over the world unlike I have seen in so many years.
I grew up in a single parent home. My mother always seemed to find ways to keep us housed and well fed but there were times when I wondered if she was privy to some kind of magic. I knew how small her income was and found it rather amazing that she was able to hold things together with so little. To this day I think that she should have written a book on how to manage a household with a bit of imagination. She knew how to keep us well fed with her culinary magic that took a pot roast through many iterations during the course of a week.
Now my brothers and I live like royalty thanks to our mother’s abilities to keep us safe while we navigated toward our life’s work. We were part of a fortunate generation that had so many opportunities that no longer exist for our young people today. We old folks like to brag about our humble beginnings but the truth is that we were able to purchase gasoline for twenty five cents a gallon or less. Our first cars cost a few thousand dollars. We were able to purchase homes for twenty thousand dollars and even though our salaries may have been proportionally small we had good health benefits and sometimes even pension plans that would sustain us in our old ages.
Sadly our president thinks that he has every right to decide whether or not to levy tariffs and when and where he can declare war. Instead of Congress rationally discussing such issues the majority Republicans seem to be content to do nothing to stop him and then to defeat any attempts by the Democrats to curb his enthusiasm for reshaping the world to his own desires. Thus prices are high and ordinary citizens are struggling and wondering what happened to the promises of better days with Trump at the helm. People are truly worried just as Kim pointed out and I have begun to be concerned as well.
I plan to take part in the No Kings protest tomorrow. It will be my fourth time to do so since Trump became our president. With each passing week I have found more and more reasons to liken him to an authoritarian king who decorates his office with gold and remains ignorant of the suffering of so many of the people. I urge everyone to find a way to use their voices and their influence to let Trump and the Republican party know that his flaunting of the Constitution and our democratic principles is not sustainable. Make your concerns known. Your silence insures that nothing will be done to set things right. Find the issue that bothers you the most and then use the power that the First Amendment gave all American citizens. Use that freedom of speech. Join us as we peacefully let it be known that this is not the beloved country we have known. Let Republicans know that we expect them to assert themselves and stop bowing to the outrageous demands of a president overstepping his powers. The whole world needs us to help set things right. As Gandhi reminds us the tyranny will ultimately fail. It always does and we should all be on the right side of truth and freedom when it happens.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 